Michael Fassbender

Michael Fassbender had a good year -- a very good year, actually -- a year most actors dream of in between endless auditions and late nights tending bar. The 34-year-old, chiseled, German-born, Irish-raised thesp starred in -- count ‘em -- five films this year, ranging from big-budget blockbusters like this summer’s X-Men: First Class to more cerebral fare like David Cronenberg’s festival darling A Dangerous Method, which saw Fassbender showcase his startling range as a more camera-friendly version of Carl Jung. But it’s his 2011 grand finale as a mournful sex addict in Steve McQueen’s chilling new film Shame that’s earned the veteran actor the most acclaim, and cries from Los Angeles to New York that cinema’s next great hope has arrived.

MAGNETISM

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival doubled as a Hollywood sex symbol convention: Clooney, Gosling and Pitt all attended and were their usual dapper selves. But by fest’s end, the hunk getting all the buzz was Michael Fassbender, who showed up to swanky afterparties with the same unkempt facial hair, leather jacket and faded Iron Maiden tee he’d worn to the all-day junkets before, a bold move only the coolest of movie stars could ever pull off. And he pulled off what’s perhaps the most important test of an emerging heartthrob: A female audience member is said to have fainted during the premiere of Shame. In Shame, Fassbender plays a compulsive sex fiend, a detached cipher who uses women as vehicles for his own physical pleasure, and, yes, the rumors are true: He goes full frontal. Ladies, the line starts here.

SUCCESS

It’s not hard to see why GQ named Michael Fassbender their “Breakout Star of The Year.” A leading man on the verge since his searing, award-winning turn as an IRA prisoner in Hunger, 2011 saw the shape-shifting actor come into his own with versatile performances in period pieces (Jane Eyre, A Dangerous Method), action epics (X-Men: First Class) and art-house award contenders (Shame), which has already earned him the top acting award at the Venice Film Festival, the spotlight award from the National Board of Review and will likely lead to nomination come Oscar time. Regardless of whether he wins or not, Fassbender’s prospects are as strong as can be thanks to a plum role as a cyborg in Prometheus, Ridley Scott’s kinda-prequel to Alien due next summer. Futures don’t get much brighter than this.

Michael Fassbender Biography

If you sometimes find that you can’t quite place his accent, it’s because although Michael Fassbender grew up in Ireland, he was born in Heidelberg, West Germany, and was raised in part by his German father, who ran West End House, a local restaurant in Killarney, Ireland. Fassbender’s upbringing was typically Catholic. He was an altar boy, went to Catholic school, but his desire to act eventually took him to the legendary Drama Centre in London.

Michael Fassbender Pays His Dues

Michael Fassbender’s big break could have just as easily happened a decade ago when he landed his first notable role in Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg’s pedigreed miniseries Band of Brothers. Instead, he would spend the better part of the aughts cutting his teeth in obscure projects like a 10-part radio serialization of Dracula for BBC Nothern Ireland, a play called Allegiance performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and a small UK film called Angel. Fassbender eventually returned to Hollywood with a supporting role in the surprise hit 300, but it was the film’s lead Gerard Butler who came out of that on top.

Michael Fassbender Breaks Out

When Steve McQueen’s film Hunger premiered at Cannes in 2008, all the talk centered around a then-unknown Irish actor named Michael Fassbender, whose De Niro-like dedication led him to shed 33 pounds to play Bobby Sands, one of ten IRA prisoners who starved themselves to death in 1981. The hyper-realistic film was brutal, and as magnetic as it was, Fassbender’s performance was at times tough to watch. That didn’t stop critics from hailing it as one of the best of the year, including the London Film Critics Circle, who named him the British Actor of the Year. It also made directors in Hollywood take notice, among them Quentin Tarantino, who cast Fassbender as Lieutenant Archie Cox in his WWII romp Inglorious Basterds. In it, Fassbender got to showcase his bilingulalism when certain scenes required him to speak German. Though admittedly rusty at first, Fassbender aced the role and officially became a hot commodity in Hollywood.

Michael Fassbender Becomes a Movie Star

After getting two middling films out of his system -- the universally panned Jonah Hex and the little-seen Centurion -- Michael Fassbender is on a roll. First as the ravenous Rochester in Jane Eyre, then as the diabolical Magneto in X-men: First Class and finally as the complicated psychiatrist Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, Fassbender has made a habit lately of portraying complicated, cruel men. But those dudes look like Boy Scouts compared to Brandon Sullivan, the emotionally empty sex addict at the center of Shame, Fassbender’s second collaboration with Steve McQueen, and his official coming out party in more ways than one. Much has been made of his multiple nude scenes in the film, in which the well-endowed actor goes full frontal. But despite all the attention being paid to Fassbender’s member, it’s his performance as the callous Manhattan office worker that’s earned him all the attention, including loads of Oscar buzz. It also sets him up for what will be a busy 2012, with Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus set for release.